KCUR-FM reports that on Wednesday, Judge Carlos Murguia of the U.S. District Court of Kansas ruled, based on a Ninth Circuit opinion, that 8 U.S.C. §1324, the law prohibiting someone from “encouraging” or “inducing” illegal immigration, is an unconstitutional infringement upon the First Amendment. In doing so, Murguia vacated the convictions of two illegal aliens, Jose Felipe Hernandez-Calvillo and Mauro Papalotzi, who were convicted in August 2018 by a jury for conspiring to encourage illegal aliens to remain here through employment at a drywall company in Lawrence, Kansas. Four others were originally indicted by a grand jury in 2015.

This law has been on the books in some form for over 130 years, and numerous federal courts have upheld convictions based on §1324. Yet one judge, who worked for an open-borders group named El Centro Inc. and whose sister Janet Murguia is president of La Raza (now called UnidosUS), suddenly thinks conspiring to harbor and encourage illegal immigration violates the First Amendment. Carlos’ sister Mary (who is an identical twin to Janet) is a federal judge on the very Ninth Circuit Court from which he drew this opinion. Judge Mary Murguia once recused herself from a trial involving pro-enforcement Sheriff Joe Arpaio because of her sister’s leadership of La Raza. Carlos should have done the same thing this week in this case, which involves a law that directly conflicts with the work with the open-borders groups his family is associated with.

Rather than rule based on the law, he decided to adopt the ruling of the Ninth Circuit (which doesn’t have jurisdiction in Kansas), which ruled last December that §1324 is “unconstitutionally overbroad” because it “criminalizes a substantial amount of protected expression.” “The court adopts (the 9th Circuit’s) analysis in full and agrees that (the law) on its face is overbroad under the First Amendment,” said Murguia in a brief bench ruling first reported by KCUR-FM.

This assertion is ridiculous, because the law clearly refers to engaging in subversive and fraudulent activities to encourage or enable actual individual aliens to remain in the country, not mere political advocacy for liberal immigration policies in the abstract. It’s like saying that someone who hates high taxes or gun control laws and advocates against them is the same as a person who actively assists tax cheats and gun felons in achieving the end goal of the criminalized behavior.

The 1952 INA (8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)) calls for felony prosecution for anyone who “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.” Subsection (V)(I) prohibits “any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts.” The two defendants in this case were convicted on both counts. This law passed the Senate unanimously!

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So how could a single judge who has a family history of open-borders activism be allowed to veto such long-standing and universal laws? The answer is that he has no such power other than what the other branches are willing {snip}

Finally, it’s important to remember that this is yet another example of judges attempting to fully nullify long-standing immigration law. Some on the Right believe that Congress needs to pass new laws in order to end illegal immigration. It’s simply not true. We don’t have a law problem; we have a judicial supremacy problem. The only question is whether the other branches will give this fake power full effect.